Roller Coaster

This is going to be long. I'm pretty wound up tonight. I've had some of the lowest and highest days of my short teaching career packed into the past ten days. I feel as though I've been on a roller coaster with my emotions going through radical ups and downs. Let me share some of the events.

Having prepared lesson plans for a sub, I traveled back and forth to Athens for the HOSA conference a week ago Thursday, Friday, and again on Saturday. One student, whom I'll call SP, went to the conference with me. It was fun seeing how excited she became when infected by the enthusiasm of other HOSA teens in attendance from throughout Georgia. SP had a tennis match in Athens on Friday afternoon so we skipped out of the conference for a few hours. It was an away (far away) match for our high school tennis team. Besides the two coaches, I was the only spectator cheering for them. Three of my students played that evening. My rapport with those three improved significantly and all the students seemed genuinely appreciative of my attendance and attention.

Monday morning I was at school an hour early to meet the American Red Cross truck. It was the day of our HOSA-sponsored blood drive. HOSA members were the volunteers to work at the drive because I had classes to teach. I was back and forth to the auditorium every spare minute and stayed to clean up afterward. It went well and we ended up 10 units over our goal.

Halfway through Monday morning, the teacher across the hall came to see how I was taking the news about the behavior of my students while I was gone Thursday and Friday. Having been tied up with the blood drive, I had not yet read all the notes from the sub so my co-worker filled me in. There were several incidents but the worse was when one female and one male student in my last period class got into a verbal altercation. She eventually swung at him and hit him in the face. He did not hit back but gave her a piece of his mind. The sub stepped out of the room to deal with those two students and someone stole his MP3 player off of my desk. It took two administrators to sort through that mess. The girl was suspended for three days and the guy got three days of ISS but not until after they both attended my class on Monday. I read the long note from the sub to them and told them I had expected much better from them. The guy was very quiet but the girl was just as mouthy and obnoxious as ever.

About 5:00 that afternoon I finally got to sit down at my computer to read e-mails and put in the electronic attendance for the day. It was then that I learned that an e-mail had gone out on Friday while I was gone saying several of us were to sign up for GPS training sometime Monday morning. By then (5 PM) I had more e-mails from my department head saying she hoped we had all gotten signed up. So I tried to do just that, only the internet was blocked and I could not get on to do register. That was when I lost it. I cried and cried. I had worked non-stop for days with little sleep and no time for myself or my family including my son who was home from FSU for Spring break. Now I find there is more training I must have and I am late signing up.

Well, that was just Monday. Tuesday and the rest of the week wasn't much better - like the fiasco the day we tried to tape my class for NTI - but since this is getting so long I won't bore you with all that. I'll move on to the good stuff that happened. On Wednesday afternoon, SP who had gone to the HOSA conference with me came to see me. She said, "I sure hope you have the evening of May 10 open after our HOSA meeting." She had just learned she is one of the top 10 (GPA) graduates this year. She was told to choose one special teacher from 5th grade to the present to attend a banquet with her in honor of the top 10 students. She chose me.

My students knew I was upset over the behavior issue while I was gone. Also, some of them know that teachers have to sign and turn in contracts by next Monday. I received two notes from students telling me how much I mean to them and telling me to be sure to stay. The student I wrote about last week who appologized to me has been good as gold all week. He was really genuine in his appology for his behavior. Several students I had last semester but not this semester have come to see me just to say, "Hi!" (Or , "Hey," as they say here in the South.) One guy told me I am the only teacher who likes him. Another student came to me before school this morning and asked me to wear her soccer jersey all day. The soccer coach asked each of her team members to get a favorite teacher to wear their jersey the days of home games. This is to advertise the game. I felt so honored that she asked me to wear her jersey for the second time.

It is those little things that make it worth getting out of bed and going to work in the morning. Every day is not a bad day. My daughter is also a teacher. Just this evening she suggested I write the good things down and take pictures to put with those writings so I'll have something to look at and remind me when the roller coster of teaching has taken me into a deep dip. Those reminders would be proof that there truly are highs to come just around the bend.